The relationship between gratitude and resilience.
I went to Michigan to stay with my mom after a car accident where she broke four ribs, cracked her sternum and bruised one entire leg very badly. She is 79 and my step-dad is 96. He is the better driver.
After a few stressful days of mom getting mixed up about meds and blood pressure being too high, and general confusion from the stress of the accident, she and Ray started to settle down and relax.
Each of us has experienced real trauma, each in different ways and been forced to find our way through it. Grow resilience or give up.
I stayed for a week and a half, working from their home, my childhood home, in Michigan. We caught up on life and shared many stories from the past, as we do often. And we celebrated growth and the positive changes life has brought.
Ray, who is Filipino and German, lost his first wife to cancer in his 20s with 3 little kids. He went back to school to become an engineer. A couple of years ago, Ray bought a new truck for his part-time business. He decided to build a chicken coop and raise 20 chickens from eggs last year. He takes care of their 8 acres, including mowing and gardening. He plays pool every day and competes in a pool tournament every week. Again, he is 96.
My brothers came into town and we took our mom and Ray out to dinner. Ray leans over to tell me a joke:
Worried that their son was too optimistic, the parents of a little boy took him to a psychiatrist. In an attempt to dampen the boy’s spirits, the psychiatrist showed him into a barn piled high with nothing but horseshit.
Instead of displaying distaste, the little boy clambered to the top of the pile and began digging.
“What are you doing?” the psychiatrist asked.
“With all this horseshit,” the little boy replied, beaming, “there must be a pony in here somewhere.”
Ray again expressed to all of us how grateful he was that my mom was okay. He joked about mom getting into an accident to get us to all show up at the same time. And he talked about finding the ponies.
The next day one of my brothers was getting ready to drive me to the airport. Everyone gathered for goodbyes. I looked around the group; my mom going back to school in her 40’s after losing custody of us kids, getting her masters in her 50’s. One brother recently diagnosed with chronic illness, another having lost his son to cerebral palsy. I have a list of “experiences” myself with cancer, kids with high medical needs, and more, and we all have made it to the other side. And I think we learned resilience a step at a time, making one decision after another to get to through the tough times. I believe we all learned from each other, observing that it is possible to move through these things and find beauty in these moments.
So I looked around this group of people I call family, with all of our experiences and Ray gives me a big tearful hug and says “So many fucking ponies!”
Gratitude and resilience are a practice that go hand in hand. Observe and learn.
